Abstract
In this paper a new learning algorithm for curvature smoothing and improved generalization for multi-layer neural networks is proposed. To enhance the generalization ability a constraint term of hidden neuron activations is added to the conventional output error, which gives the curvature smoothing characteristics to multi-layer neural networks. When the total cost consisted of the output error and hidden error is minimized by gradient-descent methods, the additional descent term gives not only the Hebbian learning but also the synaptic weight decay. Therefore it incorporates error back-propagation, Hebbian, and weight decay, and additional computational requirements to the standard error back-propagation is negligible. From the computer simulation of the time series prediction with Santafe competition data it is shown that the proposed learning algorithm gives much better generalization performance.